


Starflower

by orphan_account



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: (sort of), F/F, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-28 21:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11426535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: This AU is connected to the universe of "And They Will Write Our Myths in Gold", in which Alex is Buddhist, Lucy Lane is an Atenist sun worshipper, and Alex decides to rescue Astra from the DEO after she's tortured by General Lane.  Their feelings for each other unfold over the course of the negotiations for Astra's safety while Astra is staying on Alex's couch.





	Starflower

Alex woke with a start.  She heard Astra tossing on the couch again.  She knew it was another nightmare.

Sometimes the nightmares were about the torture she’d just suffered, but not always.  Sometimes they were about Non, Fort Rozz, the death of Krypton, which she had not been able to witness.  It burned a hole in her, in a way than it did to Kara.  Kara had seen it go, which was its own special brand of misery.  But Astra had never gotten to say goodbye. 

Alex rolled out of bed and walked out to the fold-out sofa where Astra was sleeping. It was only right; Alex had smuggled her out of the DEO after Lane and his goons had injected her with Kryptonite, so where else would she be except here?

Tonight’s nightmare sounded like it was about something else, not the torture.  Maybe something that had happened in Fort Rozz.  Alex gently woke her.  Astra started, sat up, looking around wildly, disoriented.  

“It’s okay,” Alex said quietly.  “You’re not there.  You’re here.”  

It was a strange situation.  She didn’t trust her, not entirely, but she also saw this fragile side of her now.  She saw how she worried after Kara.  She saw how deeply she clung to the courage of her convictions.  Removing Astra from the DEO was initially a moral decision, based on the fact that her growing Buddhism had been making her less and less comfortable with aggressive interrogation techniques.  But it had become something else, now.  It was a more personal decision.  There was something broken in her soul and Alex understood that.  She wanted to offer her a way out, a path to something that felt like peace.  

Astra breathed deeply, steadied herself, and looked up at Alex.  “Thank you,” she said after a moment.  “I would not…”  She swooned a little, and Alex sat down on the edge of the bed and placed a hand on her shoulder.  Sometimes the injections still left her a little out of it, despite that it had been nearly a week.

Astra looked down with surprise at the hand on her shoulder, as if it were as odd as finding a squirrel there.  “You need not do that,” she said, and Alex didn’t know if she was trying to be gracious or trying to seem brave, or simply stating a fact.

“Sorry, you just … I didn’t want you to… fall over?”

Astra was trembling, Alex could feel it even in her shoulder.  She didn’t want Alex to be aware of that.  Of course.

“There’s no shame in PTSD,” she promised her.  “It’s something that happens to even the bravest soldiers, you know?”

Astra frowned.  “I do not know this expression.”

Alex sighed.  “Look, it’s … we call it post-traumatic stress disorder.  When you go through some heavy shit, and it… it leaves a mark.”

“I do not see you post-traumatic stress disordering despite your own ‘heavy shit’,” Astra grumbled, drawing her knees up to her chest. 

“It just hasn’t happened when you were around.”  Alex didn’t tell her that she heard Astra’s screams in her bad dreams sometimes, that what happened to Astra had marked her, too.  It would feel selfish to say so.  And besides, she had enough of her own past scars to recover from.  She looked at her in the half-dark and after a moment, she offered, “Look, I used to hold Kara, you know, in my arms, after she would wake up from nightmares about Krypton.  It helped… if you want, I could–?”   


Astra drew further in on herself.  “Not necessary.”

“Forget necessary,” Alex pressed.  “It might help.  Human… um, physical contact.”

Astra squeezed her eyes shut.  Alex understood her hesitation.  It was hard for her to accept kindness in any form.  And Alex was still, on some level, the adversary.  But Alex wondered whether Non had ever been loving to her even once.  So, very slowly, she moved closer to Astra, and just as slowly, shifted back, and slid her arms around Astra’s balled-up body, just like she’d done with Kara when they were kids.  And she held her, and felt her tremble, and didn’t say a word. 

She was pretty sure she felt a few hot tears drop onto her pajama sleeve.  She still didn’t say a word.  She just stayed very still, held Astra very tight, and waited until she stopped shaking.  “Better?” she asked.

Astra didn’t speak.

Alex wondered if she’d fallen asleep.  She started to withdraw, but Astra gripped one of her arms.  “Don’t,” was all she managed to say.

So, Alex stayed, and held her until she fell asleep.  

  
  
  


********************

  
  


Alex continued to negotiate with Lucy Lane.  She really hadn’t really had a plan in mind when she placed Astra’s still-weak form into a body bag and loaded her into a DEO fake ambulance.  She just knew she had to get her out, away from General Lane, Lucy’s father, away from his syringes full of liquid Kryptonite.  She’d fought Astra on several occasions at that point, but since she’d been imprisoned, she’d also come to know her in conversations had through the plexiglass wall of her holding cell.  She’d threatened at one point to go in there and beat information about her plan out of her, but in truth, she’d started to lose her taste for that kind of questioning.  So she played chess with her, Astra calling out her moves through the cell walls.  She came to appreciate her strategic mind.  She got her to talk about Kara.  She saw, from comments here and there, how empty and loveless her marriage seemed.  She was finding the vulnerabilities, she just needed a little more time.  

General Lane hadn’t been willing to give her that.

Alex had been struggling for a while with the requirements of her DEO job.  Righteous violence was something she understood intellectually, and for a long time, it even felt good.  But it had begun to gnaw at her, that she had been asked to torture people for information, that she had twice been kidnapped and subjected to mind-control in which she had nearly hurt people that she cared for.  And the killing, justified or not, started to itch in her spine, and she’d started drinking too much keep her discomfort at bay.  So she’d sought ought dharma practice, to shield herself from the misery of what was being asked of her.  It helped.  But it had also had been leading her inexorably to the conclusion that her path was not a path of violence.  Not anymore.  Astra’s torture was what finally broke her, what finally made her decide that she had to excise this part of her life in favor of something else.

Now she was hanging everything on the most risky gambit of all; throwing Astra’s fate (and her own, because they were now very much linked) on the overdeveloped sense of justice of Lucy Lane, the General’s daughter.

Alex didn’t know her well.  She knew that unlike her father, a Christian nativist and known for being filled with hatred for aliens, Lucy Lane was a particularly martial brand of Atenist, the sun worshippers who valued rationality and justice above all else.  She hoped against hope that it would be enough to win her help.  They could sure use a JAG lawyer on their side right about now.  Alex convinced her to go around her father, to help them cut a deal with the Federal Extraplanetary Immigration Agency, get Astra safe and end whatever this Myriad thing was that she’d been planning.  Kara’s cousin, Kal-El, was supposedly dating Lucy’s sister, so the hope was that maybe she wasn’t as filled with hate and fear of aliens as her father was.  It was a big gamble.

To be honest, the whole goddamn thing gave her nightmares too.

It was inevitable that they would eventually wake her in the night.

She was dreaming of Astra being hauled away for more torture, of Myriad going forward and everyone’s heads exploding, and of being thrown in a cell to suffer through her own painful death, alone.  She dreamed of being told by some invisible voice that it was what she deserved, for her own history of violence and the dark, sticky things that lurked in her spirit.  

When she woke from it, she woke to Astra, gingerly jostling her shoulder and saying her name repeatedly.  Alex felt sick, but was relieved to be waking up in her own place.  She was shivering from the awfulness of what she’d just experienced inside her own head.  

“Would you …” Astra began hesitantly.  “Would it help you if I did as you did for me?”

Alex shrugged.  They hadn’t discussed it again after that time.  It was a thing that had happened in the middle of the night and by the light of day, neither one of them wanted to poke at it.  Astra was ashamed and Alex was … well, she didn’t know what.

But here they were again.  It was the middle of the night.  And one of them was falling apart.  And this time it was her turn.  “I guess,” she said finally.  And she moved over in the bed.

Astra slid closer, and positioned herself exactly as Alex had done, but paused.  “You are not curled up as I was.”

Alex smiled a little.  “OK, look, it doesn’t need to…”  And then she figured it would just be easier if she did pull her knees up to her chest.  So she did, and Astra placed her arms around her, a little awkwardly, and they sat there a while.  Alex let her head drop back against Astra’s chest.  She felt Astra stiffen a little when she did this, but then after a few moments, she relaxed a bit, and they settled in.  

It was a little weird.  But it helped.  They were, after all, in this together.  

But they didn’t talk about it.

  
  
  


***********************************

  
  


They were close to a deal.  It was going to involve Astra sabotaging her own plan and giving Non over to the DEO.  Alex could see that, however empty that marriage might be, this offer that Lucy was putting on the table was chafing against every fiber of honor in Astra’s body.  She struggled with it, she wept at night, she hated herself for even considering it. 

Their days were awkward and quiet, and Astra addressed her as Agent Danvers, and Alex addressed her as General.  They stayed holed up in Alex’s apartment, reading, watching movies, and trying to rest in between Alex’s tense phone calls with Lucy Lane.  They binge-watched both seasons of HBO’s “Rome”, which Astra seemed to find engaging.

But they kept finding themselves holding each other after nightmares, and once Alex held her through what sure looked like a panic attack.  Astra slowly got better at not being so weird and stiff about it.  Alex invited her to meditate with her in the mornings, and it seemed to scrub off the residual anxiety.  There was something about having someone next to her on the mat, breathing in time with her, sharing her connection with the world and her body.  

The night came when Alex woke, tensed up, from a dream she couldn’t remember, to find Astra sitting on the edge of her bed, hunched over and holding her head in her hands.  Alex rubbed her eyes.  “You ok there, General?”

Astra shook her head.  “I cannot sleep.”

Alex nodded.  “You’re afraid Lucy won’t accept our last set of terms.”

Astra nodded.  “And I am also afraid she will.”

Alex understood.  If Lucy didn’t accept the terms Astra wanted, which were that Non not be harmed, and that they put a finite time limit on how long they expected her to wear a locator chip… Astra would have few choices. 

And Alex’s stakes were high, too.  If they failed to reach a deal, she’d be court martialed for insubordination, in the best of circumstances.

But if Lucy accepted the terms, then Astra was left with having to betray her husband and accept that she was letting go of a plan she had spent decades hatching.  It was equally unsavory.

Alex sighed, and hiked over in the bed.  She patted the mattress.  “Lie down,” she ordered gently.  

Astra looked at her, hesitating. 

Alex sleepily smiled at her.  “It’s okay.  I promise it’s not going to get weird.”

Astra looked confused.  “Get weird?”

Alex shook her head, remembering that Astra’s entire relationship to sex was very different than what Alex had grown up knowing.  “Sorry, nothing, it’s a human thing.”  She patted the mattress.  “Come on, I’m exhausted, I wanna go back to sleep.”  She lay back down.

After a long hesitation, Astra lay down in the space next to Alex, the mattress springs groaning under her weight.  She fidgeted about as she mashed the pillow to her preferences and pulled the blankets up under her chin.  Alex waited patiently, then when Astra seemed to have settled in, she shifted closer and slid an arm around Astra’s waist.  “Is this OK?”  She seemed stiff.

Astra let out a long breath.  “Fine.”

Alex lay there with her eyes open.  She shifted a little closer and leaned into Astra’s warmth.  Just like Kara, she was so inhumanly warm.  It was hard not to curl herself around her in a more intimate way than was necessarily consistent with their relationship.  After some moments, Astra relaxed a little, and seemed to give herself permission to enjoy being held.  After a long quiet, in which Alex had begun to wonder whether Astra had fallen asleep, Astra said, “I used to hold Kara sometimes the way you hold me now.  When I would return from a campaign, I would stay with my sister and her family, and Kara would often crawl into my bed at night.  You comfort me as one comforts a child.”

Alex frowned.  She couldn’t tell whether it was a good thing or not.  “Are you… offended by that?”

Astra made a little scoffing sound.  “No.  It is only that I … I do not recognize myself anymore.”

Alex smiled.  “Hey,” she pointed out, “you’ve comforted me.  It’s ok.  It’s only human to need that sometimes, Astra.”

“Yes, but I am not human,” Astra reminded her, but there was the tiniest lilt to her voice that convinced Alex that she was making a bit of a joke, and was amused by it.

Alex chuckled.  “I guess not.  But your heart, I think, isn’t that different from mine.”

Astra said nothing.  But she seemed to nestle back against Alex and she yawned.  

“I get tired of being strong too, sometimes,” Alex murmured against Astra’s shoulder.

Astra took hold of Alex’s arm and drew it tighter to herself, and didn’t let go.   
  
  


***********************************

  
  


Alex hated to admit how much Astra reminded her of herself.

She was strong, so very strong, so competent, so principled.  And yet.  So full of grief and guilt.  And god, so very tired of being strong.

Alex woke up the next morning to find her crouched on the mats she used for meditation, offering up a quiet prayer.  To Rao, she guessed, since that was the faith of Krypton before it had died.  

“What are you praying for?” she asked, when Astra seemed to have finished.

Astra looked at her, tired and haunted.  “Peace.”

Alex nodded.  A good thing to pray for.  “Who are you praying to?”

“The Aten,” Astra answered, referring to the human sun-worshippers’ name for Earth’s sun.  “I imagine Rao is too far to hear me.  This is the Aten’s world, and being sun gods, they are not so different.  I suspect I would have more success with that than with praying to that nailed god so many of you humans seem to like.”

Alex snorted.  “Yeah, that’d be Jesus.  Don’t call him the ‘nailed god’ around any Christians, they’ll think you’re being disrespectful.”

They took breakfast, then sat on stools at the kitchen counter and played chess.  Astra had taken to it so quickly and well that Alex suspected she was being hustled.  But the General was that sharp of mind, it was plausible that she was just that good.  Alex finally managed a checkmate but it had come at the expense of more pieces than she wanted to give up.

“You defeat me yet again,” Astra sighed, and it seemed to Alex that she was talking about much more than just chess.  She gazed at the hand-sized square of parchment on the refrigerator, which had a piece of calligraphy written on it.  “What does it mean?” 

Alex sighed. “Oh, that.  It means, Starflower.”

Astra gave her a quizzical look.  “What is its significance?”

“It’s my dharma name.”

Astra pursued.  “What is that?”

Alex smiled a little.  “Well, when you’ve committed to your dharma practice, you get a special name, and it’s … well, for some people it’s supposed to be a distillation of your true self.  Sometimes, your roshi will give you an… aspirational name.  The essence of what your practice should be leading you to.”

“Starflower,” Astra mused.  “Why that, for you?”

“The starflower goes by a few different names, but it has medicinal uses that are supposed to ease depression and sadness.  So obviously, in my case, it’s an aspirational name.”

Astra nodded thoughtfully, but said nothing.

The phone rang.  It was Lucy Lane.  The DEO had accepted the terms.  So Astra had to sell Non out.  She had to give him over in a non-lethal ambush and then supply the DEO with all of the tech and code involved in the Myriad plot.  In return, she would be allowed her freedom, provisionally, and with restrictions.  She would have to wear a locator chip for five years and agree to a no-fly clause for ten.  Alex knew what flight meant to Kara, even though she didn’t do it much, and her heart broke a little for Astra, but she understood why.  If, after five years, there were no incidents, she’d be naturalized, assuming she wanted it.  In the meantime, she’d be given political asylum status, which would permit her gainful employment and most of the rights and privileges afforded the average citizen of National City and the state of California.  It was a hard price, but a reasonable one.

“Well, if you don’t like it, you could just marry her,” Lucy Lane joked.

Alex didn’t find this funny.  “Yeah, sure.  Look, what about me?”

“Well,” Lucy sighed, “assuming all this works like it’s supposed to?  You get immunity.”

“You know I have all the evidence of your father’s illegal torture and other illegal activities on a kill switch,” she reminded Lane.  “Anything happens to me and it all gets aired to Cat Grant over at the Trib.”

“Yeah, and that’ll hurt the DEO, and your friend J’onn, and a lot of other people.”

“Then let’s hope things don’t come to that.”

Lucy sighed again.  “Listen, Danvers, I respect what you’re doing.  I think it’s fundamentally just, which is why I’ve bent over backwards to negotiate with you despite the fact that you fucking went AWOL and took a high-value prisoner with you.”

“I took a principled stand and rescued a torture victim.  I’m saving the agency from itself.”

Lane cleared her throat.  “Regardless.  I’m not the enemy.  Threats between us are not helpful.  If it all goes to plan, you get your immunity.”

“And my retirement?”

“If you still wanna retire after this op, you go for it.  You’ll get your honorable discharge for PTSD.  You’re a headache to me right now, you know that?”

“And my retirement bonus?”

“For Aten’s sake, yes, you will get your damn bonus so you can go open your bakery in Maine or whatever.”

“Tattoo shop,” Alex grumbled, “but anyway.  If that’s done, then that’s done.  Let’s talk about the op.”

  
  
  


***********************************

  
  


Alex wasn’t even surprised that night when Astra came to her bed.  She couldn’t sleep either, and had been lying in bed, looking at the ceiling and listening to Astra tossing.  She heard her get up, heard her footsteps across the hardwood floor, and looked over to find her standing there, in her flannel pajamas, next to the bed.  Alex slid over and tossed the cover back.  “Well, c’mon.  Get in.”

Astra didn’t hesitate this time.  She climbed into bed and lay on her side, facing Alex.  “You are also awake.”

“Yeah.  I’m nervous about this op.  So much hangs on it.  For both of us.”

Astra nodded.  She and Alex looked at each other in the darkness for a long time without speaking.  Alex felt a little color creep into her cheeks.  She wasn’t sure why.  Astra placed a tentative hand on Alex’s shoulder.  “You are brave to risk so much for me, when I am your enemy.”

Alex shook her head.  “You’re not my enemy.  That’s been evident for a little while now, hasn’t it?  I want to save the world too, Astra, it’s just that your way wasn’t the way.”

Astra’s hand was so warm, Alex thought.  “Still.  Are you doing this for Kara?”  She didn’t understand.

Alex shook her head.  “No.  I mean, not entirely.  I … I got you out because it was immoral, how you were treated.  I used to do things like that, but no more.  That’s not my path.”  She paused, looking at those eyes of hers, those sad, burning, haunted eyes.  “And… then it became about you.  Wanting to help you.  Not just for Kara, but for you, and who you are.”

Astra looked so fragile in this moment.  She took her hand from Alex’s shoulder and moved it down to her waist, and drew herself in towards her.  She tucked her chin to her chest so that Alex was more or less looking at the top of her head.  “Thank you,” she whispered.

“You know, you can’t take over the world,” Alex told her, half-jokingly.

“I know,” Astra replied, and her voice sounded like there was a little sob nestled in it.  Her arm encircled Alex’s waist.

“Hey,” she soothed, “it’s gonna be OK.”  Without really thinking about it, she kissed the top of Astra’s head.  

Astra looked up at her, her wet eyes wide, seeming shellshocked.

“Oh,” Alex muttered, “I’m sorry, was that… not okay?”  She was sleepy and she was holding someone who felt a lot like Kara, and comforting her in a way that felt intimate and familiar and she’d just … well…

“It was fine.”  Astra kissed her then, once, briefly, on the mouth.  

Alex’s heart squeezed in, then pushed out.  It pounded faster than a jackrabbit.  She hadn’t meant for that to happen, but she didn’t mind it.  “What … what did you mean by that?”  She wasn’t able to keep the panic from her voice.

“I have seen this done,” Astra said.  “In the stories we watch.  To show … intimacy?”

Alex groaned internally.  It hadn’t felt wrong, which was the odd thing.  It had been soft.  Softer than she’d have guessed.  “I just … no, it’s … it’s okay, I just … I mean ...I care about you, of course.  But don’t you…?  I mean, your husband?”

Astra looked bewildered.  “I had no such relationship with him.  We honored one another.  But we did not hold each other in the night.  It is different, the closeness I feel to you.”

Alex couldn’t help noticing that Astra was already speaking of him in the past tense.  She gathered her thoughts and her breath.  “Yes, that’s okay, but …”

Astra kissed her again, then.

Alex put a hand up to Astra’s face, thinking to push her away, but instead, she just ended up leaving it resting lightly on her cheek while they kissed a second time, gently, carefully.  She pulled back after a moment.  “...but we can be close, you and I, without it being… this.”

Astra's expression was hard to read, her brow in a bemused little furrow but her mouth curled ever so faintly in a smile.  “Do you not find comfort in this?”

Alex paused before answering.  The truth was, she didn’t find comfort in the many surrounding questions; what would Kara think about this, what kind of person was she if she was kissing a married woman, what would it make her if she was kissing  _ any woman at all _ because Alex Danvers had always figured she was at least sort of heterosexual?  But in the actual feeling of it?  The softness of Astra’s lips, the gentle, tentative way they brushed against hers?  Astra’s arms around her?  Comfort … well, it was in the equation somewhere.  Along with a few other things Alex wasn’t quite prepared to stick a name on.

“Astra,” she whispered at last, “this complicates things too much.  Let’s … let’s explore it after the op is done, okay?”  

“But what if there is no after?”

“There will be an after.”

“But what if there is not?”  Astra kissed her again, then withdrew and looked at her with a soft, sad little smile.

“You make a valid point.”  

“It seems to me,” Astra said, and Alex could feel her breath, warm against her lips, “this is the greatest comfort I have ever known.”

Alex slipped in tighter, and she found Astra’s mouth again.  She did feel good; her body, her crazy Kryptonian warmth, her hard muscles, and her kiss, good grief, her soft, soft kiss.  “Okay,  but… We don't need to worry about what it means.  Let's not talk too much about it now,” she mumbled between kisses.

“We never talk about anything,” Astra mumbled back.  “Not once since we started holding each other at night.”

“I thought you wanted it that way.”

“I thought  _ you _ did.”

Alex laughed then, against Astra’s lips.  “This is a little confusing for me, you know.”

“And yet you laugh.  You see?  It makes you feel better to kiss me.”

They lay kissing for a long while, until Alex decided that they needed to stop before things got any more confusing.  Her body was starting to gear up for something more intense than just a bit of exceedingly soft, exploratory making out.  Alex was definitely not ready for that right now.  “We… should probably go to sleep,” she suggested with no small measure of reluctance.

Astra agreed, seeming as ambivalent as Alex felt.  “You are right.  Turn over, so that I can hold you.”

“What?  No way.  I’m big spoon.”

“You are not a spoon.  And it is my turn to hold you.”

“Fine.”  Alex turned over and drew Astra’s arm around  her.  “Goodnight, Astra.”

“Goodnight, Star Flower.”

 


End file.
